1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to policy-based internet archiving and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for policy-based archiving of web content that was communicated during internet activity associated with a computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
An enterprise may employ one or more system for processing and/or storing data. The typical enterprise may use a server computer to provide computer services to multiple client computers. Furthermore, data used by the client computers may be stored or archived onto a storage medium (e.g., an optical disk, a magnetic tape and the like) in a data storage device (e.g., a tape drive, a hard disk drive, a RAID configuration storage array and/or the like). The archived data may be retrieved in the future for various reasons, such as disaster recovery, discovery for pending litigation, ordinary use by the client computers and/or the like.
Currently, archiving software is limited to certain types of data, such as email messages. The archiving software does not archive web content associated with internet activity, such as web pages (e.g., web content, universal Resource Locators (URLS), embedded links and/or the like), files downloaded, sent/received web based e-mail and/or the like. Even though web content may be temporarily stored in a cache (e.g., a browser cache), such a cache is under the control of the user and not the system administrator. Hence, the web content and/or the web pages indicated in the cache may be removed (e.g., purged) and/or modified.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for archiving web content associated with internet activity amongst one or more computers in accordance with a policy where the archived web content may be retrieved in the future.